The Outback in Space

Posted on March 19, 2013 by borysSNORC

Commander Chris Hadfield, currently posted on the International Space Station has a Twitter account, God bless his cotton socks, and every day he posts up the most amazing pictures of the earth from space for us mere mortals rooted on the ground to admire… and to dream about.

“Taking pictures of the Outback from space is like unearthing ancient cave paintings.”

“Tonight’s Finale Our Moon, forever to be graced by the footprints of twelve brave men.”

“Mexican volcano with airliner contrail for artistic emphasis.”

“From Ontario to Superior, the Great Lakes in mid-March, as-seen from Earth orbit.”

“A fan of sand in Oman. From space you can see which way the Omani wind blows.”

pictures from the international space station

“Enormous eddy off the Italian coast.”

“Inside the Cupola in the shadow of the Earth, our nighttime.
Very cool photo by Kevin Ford.”

“Happy Pi Day! The iconic Manicouagan meteor crater has a diameter of 300 km. What’s its area?”

“Crazed patchwork of farms in Central Asia,
a monochromatic 3D hallucination in the snow.”

“Folkestone and Dover. Both the White Cliffs and the ferryboat tracks

are visible from space.”

pics from the international space station

“Success! For months we tried to get a clear photo of Minsk, Belarus,
hometown of happy crewmate Oleg Novitsky”

photos from international space station “Wicked geology laid bare in Northeast Africa.”

Sometimes I really love the internet and this era we are seeing in. I can’t imagine what will be possible for our kids…

Three years doing a photography degree and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

Posted on October 15, 2008 by borysSNORC

It’s been years since I’ve done any serious photography. I guess I got focused on having the Small Child and the ongoing drama of desperately trying to have another Small Child. Then my Dad got sick and then I went to work in Customer Service for the Devil aka Goliath (for the record now I no longer work there… Telstra).

All that coupled with the fact that I have decent wet film equipment but my digital camera while functional was certainly not up to scratch compared to the Canon EOS1 and Canon EOS3 I previously owned. So I kinda lost interest in photography. I have recently suffered a loss in the camera department and had to make one of dem t’ings….. you know an insurance claim. So I’ve been back looking at equipment to replace it and have decided on the new Canon EOS 50D. Should funds have been more freely available for such things, I think I would have waited a bit for the new Canon EOS 5D Mark II but at some AUS$4k it seems a bit excessive you know… just a tad. (My Canon EOS1 was around $8k back in ’96 but I didn’t have the whole picket fence thing going on back then).

I’ve only just bought it home today and haven’t really had much of a chance to play with it but one thing that I am immediately impressed with is the 17-85mm F4-5.6 IS USM lens. I was mucking around with it last night for a bit and am absolulty gobsmacked that I could hand hold a one second shot of a dog (what moves!) under a single standard tungsten lightbulb and get a result that was nothing to write home about but under those conditions was incredible! I’ve always been pretty steady, but usually only reliably to about 1/6th or 1/8th of a second (while coughing in a church :P). So to say I’m already impressed with the Image Stabilizing lens is an understatement.

More about the camera of fabulousness as I find something to take photos of 🙂
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Food for thought

Posted on January 16, 2008 by borysSNORC

Gotta love the internets. I stumbled onto the work of an amazing photographer earlier – Carl Warner. He appears to be a high end creative advertising photographer who specializes in food photography. But the works that piqued my curiosity were some food landscapes… ‘Foodscapes’… that he’s done. Very clever, very beautiful and (having done my photography degree majoring in commercial advertising photography) rather difficult and very time consuming works to create.

The images were created in the studio on an 8 x 4 foot table with the fronts of each of the Foodscapes being approximately 2 foot across. The foregrounds and the backgrounds were shot in layers to avoid spoilage of the subject matter and composited later from what I understand. All the components of each photograph are commonly found in the kitchen.

Red cabbage sunset, cheesy cliffs, lettuce trees and sweet potato rocks.

Cheese villas and pasta curtains.

Bread mountains and cauliflower rocks and corals.

Pasta wagons, mushroom wheels, pinenut stone wall and chili and pepper trees.

Turnip, banana and strawberry balloons, berry produce and fields and roads of grains.

Peas hanging from broccoli trees, bread mountains, cauliflower clouds and a road paved with cumin.

A sea made of salmon, rocks of potatoes, overhanging trees made of herbs and what looks like chocolate cake for rocks!

And this one especially groovy and no doubt horridly perishable – snow capped mountains and snow covered trees made of bacon and cold meats and a sled made of breadsticks and parma ham.

I think his work is amazing. The perspective of the images is fantastic and the lighting is just so. It’s fun to look at the images and figure out what sort of food has been used to create each section of the picture. I’d love to spend my days doing stuff like that (give or take the cold meats which is a bit icky). Carl Warner’s website is here, but be warned it’s one of those painful flash sites that take forever to load.

They always catch me off guard…

Posted on February 28, 2007 by borysSNORC

I’m never prepared… I should have something rote up my sleeve for whenever friends get engaged, for I invariably get asked to photograph their weddings. AND I HATE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY WITH A PASSION!!!! Hate it worse than coffee in fact, and that’s really saying something. 🙁

I’ve only done about a dozen weddings, because I normally I do everything I can to avoid doing them… So why is it that when friends get engaged, they suddenly remember that borysSNORC has a degree in Visual Arts in Photography, and I’m sure she’d love to shoot our wedding rather than attend as a guest? 😐 I’ve been caught off guard a few times, and the approach tends to vary, so I’ve never quite learnt the signs on when the question is coming. One friend pulled me aside quietly one day, and said…. ‘Can I ask you a favor?’ to which i replied jauntily ‘Sure!’…. stupid move. Next thing I was cornered into doing a wedding that I didn’t want to do…. and a night one at that…. with no offer of remuneration. Crap. 😐

So yesterday I get yet another phone call from a newly engaged friend, that starts with ‘Well if you don’t want to do it for us, I understand and you don’t have to…’ Ah-huh… no guilt there. And she knows I’ve done two other weddings for mutual friends of ours, so I’m kinda screwed. And why is it that they never offer right off the bat to pay you to shoot their damn wedding??? Wedding photographers cost a fortune, so they’re calling me cos they want it on the cheap. But no mention of money seems to come into these conversations, so I KNOW they’re angling for a freebie. Why would anyone assume that I have some sort of altruistic motive for personally WANTING to do this for them just because we know each other socially!?!?! Man, have they got me pegged wrong. 😐

Doing a wedding sucks. The bride is normally ridiculously stressed out about every stupid little detail, then you find yourself having to deal with what their bride and groom’s parents want as well… and then there’s the inevitable drunken giggly bridesmaid who has too much champagne at the hairdressers and can’t stand in a straight line….. and the ridiculous crappy lighting issues in the church….. and the groomsmen who simply can’t keep their fucking hands out of their pockets….. and Aunty Betty who doesn’t want to be in the pictures….. and the snot nosed little brat of a nephew/nieice who wont smile for the camera… and …. and…. and!!!!

So naturally I love to undertake this sort of angst totally gratis for social acquaintances.. yeh???? Whatever!!! So now I’m looking at: Option A – get out of it by leaving the country for the duration…. or Option B – reply saying yes I’ll do it, but only if you meet my ridiculous fee.
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